202 
Farm Agreements, ^c. 
It is obvious that detailed provisions of this nature could not 
be embodied in an Act of Parliament ; and it seems, therefore, 
desirable that, fully recognising the intention of the Act, there 
should be agreements of tenancy defining hovi^ the tenant is to 
be paid for the unexhausted value of his purchased manures and 
food ; how he is to return to the land during his tenancy an 
equivalent for the produce sold ; and in what state he should 
give up the farm when his tenancy expires. These agreements 
have been adopted upon estates in Gloucestershire, Worcester- 
shire, Warwickshire, and Staffordshire. They have been tested 
by conflicting arbitrators, where tenants entitled to compen- 
sation have left their farms, and in cases where claims for breach 
of the covenants, providing how the farm should be given up, 
had to be set against the valuation of hay, straw, roots, &c. 
— and no reason for any change has resulted. 
It will be seen that these agreements, which are in substance 
the same as when framed twelve years since, are entirely in ac- 
cordance with the spirit of the Act of Parliament passed last 
year, and give what that Act could not attempt — freedom as to 
cropping, and disposal of produce ; that in their details they give 
a larger amount of compensation for unexhausted manures and 
food than is provided for by the Act, under which a tenant has 
no claim for improvements of this — the third class — after taking 
a crop of corn ; whereas the agreements, of which these covenants 
form part, by stipulating for the payment of one-fourth of the 
cost of manure applied to green-crops, and of oilcake purchased 
in the last year but one, recognise the undoubted fact that 
where such manures have been applied to the growth of turnips, 
and these have been consumed upon the land by sheep, eating 
oilcake, the benefit to the land is not exhausted by one crop 
of corn, but extends to the following clover and wheat. And 
as the Act of Parliament protects the landlord from waste, only 
by giving him a remedy by counter-claim where an off-going 
tenant claims compensation for some improvement, and none 
where no such improvement has been made, it is clear that the 
landlord's remedy under the agreements, against a tenant who 
leaves his farm in a condition involving loss to his successor, — 
viz., setting-off the penalty for default against the amount to 
which the off-going tenant is entitled for hay, straw, roots, and 
acts of husbandry, — is a more simple and effectual one than 
that provided by the Act. 
